Someone should tell Madonna that her Catholic-bashing, Jesus-exploiting shtick is getting old, as old as the recycled Abba tunes she's putting out as her own music. As old, almost, as she is.
It's the kind of exploitation that makes you want to ignore her, instead of protest against her. By protesting her endless profaning of what many people -- 85 percent of Americans qualifies as "many," I think -- hold to be sacred, do protesters only put more gas on her fire?
Make no mistake. At 48, she may be old enough to be Grandma, but Madonna's latest "Confessions" tour, the one in which she mounts herself on a mirrored cross and dons a crown of thorns as she sings, is still a commercial bonanza. It's being touted as the top-grossing concert tour ever by a female "artist." Reuters reports that in the past six years, Madonna has sold a staggering $400 million worth of tickets.
Numbers like that haven't escaped some TV executives. Her latest benefactor is the NBC television network, which announced in July that it would air a two-hour special of her concerts at London's Wembley stadium. Would they include the infamous mock-crucifixion in her song "Live to Tell"? In August, NBC executive Kevin Reilly declared: "She felt like that was a cornerstone of the show. We viewed it and didn't see it as being inappropriate."
Notice that Madonna insisted her stunt as Jesus in a blouse and skirt could not easily be edited out. She said it was crucial, and in a way, it really is. Without religious controversy, she is merely an aging drama queen in an overpopulated crowd of heavy-breathing pop divas, all playing prostitutes for the wealth and infamy.
Now it appears that NBC is rethinking the endorsement. Clearly, it committed to her without feeling the public-relations need to sniff before it bought this smelly package. In the wake of an outpouring of objections from the likes of the American Family Association, the Catholic League and others, NBC is backpedaling. The network now states it is "awaiting delivery of the special, and once we see it in its entirety, we can make a final decision."
For those of you keeping score at home, it seems that over the last few weeks NBC is attempting to create a new public campaign to insult Catholics and evangelicals alike, as if NBC stood for Notoriously Bashing Christians.
Continued... |